Strawberry Fields
by Secondhand Ragdoll
Summary: This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. A Hameron Darkfic.


**Disclaimer:** If I owned House, he would dress sluttier.  
**Story Summary:** This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. A Hameron darkfic.  
**A/N: **Special thanks to **BlueHeronz **for making me want to write again, and a million more to **athousandsmiles**, for nominating Wednesday's Child for the 2009 House/Cameron Awards. This story hasn't been proofread or redrafted, but anyone familiar with me knows that quality isn't part of my mission statement. There are spoilers from the newest season of House, dealing with the whole Chase-murdered-a-patient arc. This is, of course, a House x Cameron story, which means that even though House isn't in this chapter, he will be in a chapter eventually. Without further ado, I introduce to you "Strawberry Fields," a way to burn fifteen minutes if you're really bored and have low standards.

* * *

**Strawberry Fields  
Chapter One: **Methadone  
By Secondhand Ragdoll

The heels of her shoes click against the steam grate outside the bar, startling into flight the pigeons that have gathered on the grille to escape the predawn cold. The sky is black, except for a thin sulfurous haze above the skyline where the moon has just set, and she watches the motion of their wings against that ghostly backdrop. She watches them for a while, her breath smoking and vanishing before her in the cold air of that western night. When they have finally gone, she turns up the collar of her coat and opens the door to the bar.

He is sitting at the corner of the bar with a book of speckleheaded matches when she gets inside, and she can see that he is already drunk. He is tearing the matches out one by one and lighting them and watching them burn before he blows them out. The countertop around his elbows is a wickerwork of blackened matchsticks.

"Look at them," he says as she pulls out the barstool beside him. "Look. They burn so fast."

She looks around, raising her hand for a waitress. "Christ, Robert," she says. "I've been looking all over for you."

"They burn so fast," he says. He lights a match. "Poor bastards. They don't have a clue." The tiny flame flickers as he speaks. "Sudden light in the middle of darkness. Sudden fire where there was nothing." He drops the match and picks up a rockglass filled with bourbon.

She lowers her arm. "How long have you been here?" she says. "I tried calling you. Two or three times." There are more matchsticks scattered on the floor. They make tribal patterns against the tiles.

He drains the glass and then tilts it toward him. Ice tumbles forward with a clink. "A while," he says. He catches the bartender's eye and makes a circling motion above the empty glass with his finger.

"No, I think that's enough for you," she says. She takes the tumbler and moves it away from him.

"One more drink," he says.

"How many will that make?"

"Seven or eight," he says.

The bartender comes over with a stack of dirty cups in his hands. "Yeah?" he says, unstacking the glasses onto the bar. "You ready for another round?"

Chase looks over at her. "Just one last drink," he says.

She hesitates.

"Please," he says.

"If it's going to be your last one," she says.

Chase pedals his hand at the barman. "Go ahead," he says. "Fill her up." He watches the short slosh of whiskey into the tumbler. The ice makes transparent shadows against the bartop.

"Anything for the lady?" the bartender asks.

"I don't think so," Cameron says.

"She'll have a dirty martini," says Chase. "With olives. With a lot of olives. And what? Beefeater?"

"Tanqueray," she says. "Forget the Beefeater." He leaves and Chase smiles at her.

"Do I know you or what?"

"Robert," she says. "This has got to end. You can't keep up like this."

"Keep what up," he says. He takes a drink and flexes his fingers and says, "I can't feel my fingers." He looks at his open hand.

"You're drinking every day now," she says. "I can't even remember the last time you came home after work."

The bartender takes over a martini glass filled with icewater and a shaker. He slugs the water into a bucket beneath the counter and then rattles the shaker and pours her martini out. "We'll take the tab, too," she says. "Thank you."

"Sure thing," the bartender says.

She waits until he leaves, and then she says, "Did I do something?"

"What?" Chase says.

"I said, did I do something? To make you mad? Is it something I did?"

"Oh, Allison," he says. "Oh, God."

"Is it?" she whispers.

"No," he says. "God. No. I." He bites his fist and looks away. In the mirror behind the bar, she sees that he is crying. He looks back at her. "You could never," he says, and then stops. "I love you," he says at last.

She tries to take his hand, but he moves it away and picks up the tumbler. "What, then?" she says. "And don't tell me that it's nothing, or that you're fine. Don't you lie to my face."

"Drink your martini," he says.

She raises the glass and takes a sip and then swirls the drink in her hand. The kebab of olives rolls around the circumference of the glass. She sets it down. "Is it House?" she says. "It's House, isn't it?"

"It's not House."

"Would you tell me if it was?"

"I would tell you."

"I'm tired of this," she says. "It's like a game with you. What do I get if I get the right answer, Rob? Do I get a prize? A trip to Sonoma?"

"I promise I'm not playing games with you."

She shakes her head and picks up the martini again and takes a long drink.

"I'm not trying to keep you out."

"I guess you're just a natural at it then."

"Please don't be mad," he says. "I don't think I could take you being mad at me."

She sighs. "I'm not mad at you, Rob. I'm just scared for you."

The bartender comes by with a leather book and leaves it upright on the counter. "I'll cash you out when you're ready," he says.

"Thank you," she says.

Chase finishes his drink and turns the glass upside down. He belches into his fist and then clears his throat and points to the martini. "Are you? Do you want that? Are you going to finish that?" She slides the glass toward him. He lifts it and says, "To life. To saving lives." Martini sloshes over the rim.

"Finish up so we can go home," she says.

"And ruin all this fun?" he says.

"Just finish already."

"Look," he says. "I'll show you a magic trick. Are you watching?" He picks up the book of matches. "Watch," he says as he strikes a match. It flares with a hiss and he holds it aloft for her to see. The flame blackens the wood as it crawls downward. He waves it out. He tears out another match and lights it. "It doesn't have a chance," he says. "Once it's been used, it's over. Its function destroys it." He puts the flame out between his fingers and then holds the smoking matchstick for a moment before flicking it away. "That's what's leftover," he says. "Cinder." He takes a drink. "Nothing but fucking cinder."

"I don't get it," she says. "I don't get what you're trying to show me."

"Maybe you're not seeing the same thing I'm seeing," he says.

"Maybe it's time for you to go home," she says. "Get your coat." She puts her arm around his waist and helps him off the barstool.

"I can walk fine," he says. "I've been walking since I was two."

"You're drunk," she says.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

The bartender is eying them from the register. "He going to make it?" he says as she tries to open her clutch with one hand.

"He'll be fine," she says. She throws a fistful of money at the counter and watches as the bills waft gently to the floor.

"Hey," says the bartender.

She helps Chase to the door. Outside, she leans him against a wall and steps down into the street to hail a cab. The pigeons have gathered above the vapors of the steam grate again and they make a burring sound from their throats as they adjust their wings. A taxi pulls up to the curb and the driver leans across the seat to crank down the window.

"Get you a ride?" he asks.

"To Edgecombe," she says. "If you could just help me get him into the car."

The taxi driver gets out and shuts the door. He takes Chase by the arm.

"We both look at it and we see different things," Chase says. "I see more. I see it for what it is."

"Sure you do, pal," the driver says. He puts him into the backseat and then stands with his arms crossed, looking at him. "You think he'll be all right?" he says.

"I did what had to be done," says Chase.

Cameron watches her husband trace patterns on the window with his forefinger. "He'll be fine," she says.

The driver shakes his head and moves to the front of the car, but she is still standing there, alone. She says it again. "He'll be fine." To herself, she says, "He'll be fine. He will be fine."

The words echo and come back to her, like a chorus in the lonely night.

* * *

He wakes just as the sun is rising and all the hard edges of his bedroom are softened in a honey colored light. The radio alarm clock is playing a faint ballad. He rolls over and feels her lying under the covers beside him, and he puts his hand on her thigh to make sure she is really there. He stays that way, feeling the heat build between their skin, and watches her for as long as he can before he drifts back to sleep. When he wakes again the sun is overhead and the bedroom lies in shadow. The sheets on her side of the bed are cold. He sits up. There is a jar of water on the nightstand with a pair of aspirin and a note that says "Breakfast in bed. Love, A." He smiles.

He goes into the kitchen. Cameron has hired a contractor to take down one of the walls and the sheetrock is already gone so all that is left is bare strutwork with sheets of plastic over it, like a movie set. There is a thin layer of silt on the floor. He stands in the kitchen for a while with the plaster he stirred up drifting sideways in the cool light from the window, like the pollen from some alien world.

At three he dials a cab and holds the phone to his ear as he threads a necktie through his collar. "Yes, hello, Princeton," he says. "Can I get a cab sent to the corner of Second and Belyea Avenue?" He begins to make a Windsor knot and then unloops it and adjusts the tie tails and makes the knot again. "Destination Princeton Plainsboro," he says. "Yeah. The hospital. Teaching hospital. Yes. All right, thank you."

The trees are a gridiron of naked branches when he gets outside, and he tries to elicit a memory of the leaves changing color, but there is nothing. He remembers them flat and richly green, sha sha-ing in the summer wind. Now the rainwater channels overflow with dry leaves. Overripe apples have fallen and shattered against the streets, their once glistening flesh oxidized to a dull brown.

The cab is idling at the curb, its exhaust visible and featherlike in the cold air. He gets into the taxi and closes the door. The cabman looks in the rearview mirror as he pulls away from the curb. "So the hospital?" he says.

"Yeah," says Chase.

"You a doctor?"

Chase has his chin tilted up and he touches the underside of his jaw as he examines his shave in the mirror. "Sure," he says after a long while. "I used to think so."

The taximan glances at him again but he is quiet this time. There is a talk radio station on and the speakers buzz every time they hit a high note. They ride on in silence.

"You catch the game yesterday?" the cabman says at last. Chase watches the numbers on the meter tick.

"No," he says.

"Good game," he says. "There was this one pass. You should have seen it."

"Oh," says Chase.

"Caught the ball, must have been fifty yards. Should have seen the damn thing."

"Oh," says Chase.

They slow for a red light. Chase is staring out the window at the darkened plateglass of a pub. As he watches, a waitress comes and swivels the placard over to open. "Hey," he says suddenly. "Hey, you can let me off here."

The cabdriver looks at the meter. "I thought you wanted to go to the hospital," he says.

"Just let me off here," he says. "What is it going to be?"

"Seven-fifty," says the cabdriver.

"Seven-fifty," he says. He opens his billfold. "Seven-fifty. You got change?"

The cabman brings out a zippered pouch and opens it. "For what?" he says. "What do you want back?"

"Never mind," says Chase. "Nothing. Keep the change."

He is the first one into the bar. The servers are sitting around a table with heavy white mugs of coffee and watching a daytime soap on the television. They all look over at him as he pulls out a barstool. They huddle low over the table for a moment, and after what seems like a long while, one of them rises and comes over with a coaster and a roll of silverware.

"Hi," she says. She sets the coaster down in front of him. "How are you today?"

"Good," he says.

"Good," she says. "Would you like to see a menu?"

"No," he says. "I'm not hungry. Just give me whatever well drink you have."

"House select?" she says. "Premium?"

"Whatever you bring is fine," he says. "Just make sure it's whiskey."

She leaves and returns with a chilled rockglass and sets it down in front of him. "Anything else for you today?" she says.

"This is good for now," he says. "This is more than enough." He lifts the tumbler and salts his coaster and then sets the glass down again. The display on the digital clock in the corner of the bar shifts.

Outside a single leaf breaks away from its twig and spirals downward, downward.

* * *

Cameron falls asleep on the sofa waiting for Chase to come home and dreams that she and her husband are standing side by side in a barren wasteland. There is no sun overhead and the seabeds have dried up, leaving behind salt marshes filled with the rinds of dead fish. They are standing to their ankles in fine white ash and ash is falling out of the sky onto that flat scrubland. He is holding a pale, tapered conch shell in both his hands. "This must weigh about a thousand pounds," he is saying to her. He says, "Can't you take it?"

"What?" she says.

"The shell," he says. "It's so heavy. Can't you take it for a little while?"

"Why don't you just put it down?" she says.

"I can't," he says. "It has to be carried. That's the rule."

She takes the shell from him. "What rule? What is this made out of?" She says. "It's so heavy. Is this lead?"

"I've been carrying it so long," he says. "I forgot what it felt like to be light. I feel like the wind could blow me over," he says. "I feel like I could fly away." He begins to cry.

"Don't cry. It's all right. Look," she says. She holds the shell up to his ear. It feels like the heaviest thing in the world. She says, "Listen." They stand motionless in the middle of the parched desert.

She says, "If you hold it to your ear, you can hear the ocean."

They stand listening to the rote of water while all around them, ash comes sifting down.

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**A/N**: Thank you for reading, come again soon!


End file.
